If you're going to cheat, do it right

Ray Ratto

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Photo: HANS DERYK

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Brian Urlacher (L) and Lance Briggs lead players of the Chicago Bears off the team charter after arriving at Miami International Airport January 28, 2007. The Bears with play the Indianapolis Colts in Super Bowl XLI. REUTERS/Hans Deryk (UNITED STATES)
Ran on: 01-29-2007
Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher (left) leads the Chicago Bears off their team charter after arriving in Miami.
Ran on: 03-26-2008
The Bears' Lance Briggs remains the Bears' Lance Briggs, tampering or not. less

Brian Urlacher (L) and Lance Briggs lead players of the Chicago Bears off the team charter after arriving at Miami International Airport January 28, 2007. The Bears with play the Indianapolis Colts in Super ... more

Photo: HANS DERYK

If you're going to cheat, do it right

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Cheating is wrong, more or less - it depends a lot of times on who your lawyer is. Cheating in the NFL is wrong only when you get caught. Cheating in the NFL is hilarious when you get caught doing something nobody else has been convicted of doing in 38 years, don't cheat well enough to accomplish your goal and are penalized the equivalent of a pack of gum for having been caught.

The Westies got nailed by Sheriff Goodell for tampering with Chicago linebacker Lance Briggs, and we would say "allegedly" to go along with the 49ers' spin except that NFL teams basically have to get caught naked to be convicted of not wearing the proper socks. In other words, we're going with guilt, even though the evidence as reported seems at least slightly dodgy.

And yet they didn't get Briggs, who re-signed with the Bears. And yet, they got caught doing something that was last punished in 1970 when the Dolphins tampered to get Don Shula from Baltimore. And yet, they were penalized a fifth-round draft choice.

So what was the deal? Is this the best cheating they could do?

Many of the details of the Briggs tamperage (tampitude? tampolating?) are based on two short conversations between the 49ers and agent Drew Rosenhaus, which the 49ers denied and which Rosenhaus didn't admit to having, at least not to Czar Roger. But unless Goodell decided to make a random example of a team that, at least in the last five years, hasn't meant anyone else any harm, it seems likelier than not that the 49ers wanted Briggs and skated close enough to the line, wherever it is, to get caught.

Thus, we are mindful of the old Bill Veeck line, translated from the Latin in Veeck's "Hustler's Handbook," "Never steal anything you will not be proud of having stolen."

And updated for contemporary consumption, "If you're gonna bend a rule, finish the deal." Because though football fans pretend to be offended by cheating (see the hilariously overblown Spygate), they are particularly offended when their favorite team gets caught cheating without actually getting to hold the goods they allegedly cheated to obtain.

The old 49ers had been accused of skating close to the line during the Eddie DeBartolo era in many ways, but tampering wasn't one of them. More importantly, though, because the 49ers won, 49ers fans were fine with anything done in their name.

But this? Losing a draft choice in exchange for not getting a guy? This is so Little League parents grousing about Timmy's playing time. This is so beneath what people expect of their pro football teams. This is so ... meh.

The old Raiders did it right, and probably half as often as they were accused. The current Patriots do it right, because they apparently do it Costco style - in bulk. Indeed, most teams do this type of tampering all the time, or a slight variation on it. Call the agent for a guy you own, then subtly change the subject to one you don't. It's child's play, with a ski mask.

So how did the 49ers get so lucky to get caught, and then to get punished? I mean, the NFL barely recognizes California as it is, and has even less to do with the Bay Area proper. Indeed, the 49ers have such a record of competitive inertia over the last five years (if not for the Raiders, the 49ers would be the flat-line champs) that one suspected with good reason that Goodell forgot there were teams here at all.

Well, he knows now, because one of them shamelessly (and incompetently) flouts the rules, and it isn't the one with the eye patch. God, that must gall Raiders fans. To find out the team you hate is a bigger bunch of sneaks than the sneaks you like ...

So what do the 49ers do now, with dirty, red and empty hands?

One, review their book of cheats, like any good gamer would.

Two, reorder their cheating priorities. Don't cheat to get a guy you can't get, or one who won't assuredly and dramatically improve your team, like Briggs. If that's the plan, then cheat to get Peyton Manning.

Three, succeed at cheating. Nobody likes a bad cheater a lot worse than a good one.

And four, don't go on and on about how you were wronged by the mean old cop. You lost only a fifth-round draft choice, which meant whatever you did probably wasn't worth the bother. After all, as the saying goes, it can't be much of a crime if you don't get much time.

That, we presume, will be Scot McCloughan's new focus between now and draft day. That, and getting a used copy of "Hustler's Handbook" for a careful reading. If nothing else, he'll learn that the real art of doing it wrong requires doing wrong right.